make that mistake. What have the mil-
lions of French who have lived and died
in Canada produced to compare with the
magnificent literature of France? How
many Greek colonies scattered along the
shores of the Mediterranean could rival
the metropolis in sculpture or tragedy?
The rusticity of the province was not
monopolized by Puritans.

Take then the matter of government.
The Mayflower Compact, the Fundamen-
tal Orders of Connecticut, and the Fun-
damental Articles of New Haven set forth
a form of religious brotherhood as old as
the Church at Jerusalem described in the
Acts. The Pilgrims were not Puritans any-
way, but even if they were they did not
invent the term or the idea of a compact.
The so-called democracy of the Massa-
chusetts Bay Corporation was nothing but
the democracy of an English company of
merchant adventurers brought to Amer-
ica. What was not religious was English.
Nothing was new. Nothing in the realm
of ideas was contributed by the Puritans.

Consider also the spirit of our govern-
ment. If we speak of American democ-
racy, must we not think of Jefferson rather
than John Adams or Fisher Ames? And
Jefferson was born in Virginia, the origi-
nal home of slavery, indentured servi-
tude, an aristocracy, and an Established
Church. Moreover his doctrines, espe-
cially his political views, were not as
Mencken implies "importations" from
France. Any schoolboy who ever heard
of John Locke knows better. Was John
Locke a Puritan?

Did Jefferson create American democ-
racy? I resort to a Puritan of the Puritans,
who according to authentic documents
knew and loved good whiskey, Daniel
Webster. He delivered an oration at Ply-
mouth on the two hundredth anniversary
of the landing of the Pilgrims, and he told
more solid truth than will be found in all
the oratorical eruptions that will break
forth in this harassed land next Decem-
ber. And what did he say? "Our New
England ancestors . . . came to a new
country. There were as yet no land yield-
ing rent, and no tenants rendering service.
. . . They were themselves either from
their original condition or from the neces-
sity of their common interest, nearly on a
general level in respect to property. Their
situation demanded a parcelling out and
division of the lands and it may be fairly
said that this necessary act fixed the fu-
ture frame and form of their government.
The character of their political institu-
tions was determined by the fundamental
laws respecting property."

For more than two hundred years the
freeholder and his wife who labored with
their own hands shaped the course of
American development. This fact has
more to do with American democracy,
American art, American literature, as
Mencken himself knows and says, than all
the Puritanism ever imported into New
England. The yeoman and his wife were
too busy with honest work to give long
hours to problem plays, sex stories, or the
other diversions of "the emancipated
age." Imagine Bernard Shaw, Gilbert
Chesterton, or Baudelaire doing a turn
at log rolling or at spring plowing in the
stormy fields of New Hampshirel! Suffi-
cient unto the day is what comes out of it.
Whoever will not try to see things as they
really are need not set himself up as a
critic or teacher. And let it be remem-
bered that the Irish, Germans, Poles,
Hungarians, and Jews are not the only
people who can be objective, high, diaph-
anous, Olympian and understand "poor,
crude America, with its dull, puritanical,
Philistine history."

It was not the Puritans that inflicted
professors and doctors of philosophy
upon us and doctors' dissertations, semi-

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